


Little Fawn

by LustreGuts



Category: Deathgarden (Video Game)
Genre: 2021 UPDATE IM STILL WORKING ON THIS.... LIFE SO BUSY IM DYING BUT I DIDNT ABANDON THIS I PROMISE, Animal Death, Character Study, Deer can have little a Dead Dove. as a treat, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Temporary Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:40:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22871140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LustreGuts/pseuds/LustreGuts
Summary: Did you know that, when given the opportunity, many herbivores such as deer will consume meat that they can scavenge?Sometime, these herbivores will even kill and eat live animals, when the animals are too small and weak to resist.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. Carcass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im not fucking around with that 'graphic description of corpses' tag by the way. like to be clear, this might possibly be even worse than canon, for a game fuckin named DEATHGARDEN: BLOODHARVEST, not that theres even ever been anyone in in DG:BH tag like all of 2020 so far other than me, this is MY city now, MY tag and MY one person fanfic kingdom now babey oh HELL YEAH!!!!

She avoids other people as much as she can.

She doesn't have a reason to, no explanation she can offer to the people who expect one from her, but she has a need to. It keeps her calm. It gives her the focus she relies on in the Deathgarden, so she spends her time in the Complex away from the other Scavengers, yet the constant ringing of distant voices is inescapable.

_You don't need to escape._

Another incident has happened today within the Scavenger's living quarters, and she knows it was in the shower stalls even if the Complex staff won't share that specific information with those who ask for it. A warlord's deputy had kept his identity hidden, because he had the misfortune of being imprisoned in an area of the Complex far from any of his connections and allies. It had worked, and for over a year he maintained a persona that disguised the tyrant who was serving out his penal sentence, until the day came that he was recognised. The attack was carried out with calculated and precise brutality, by a group of brand new aspirants who had all been personal victims of his in the ruins.

Eve knows this private information because she heard them say it, late at night as she wandered around the cell block. She had taken cover because she heard people approaching, and couldn't risk being caught by the guards after curfew. Instead of patrolling guards however, it was a pair of Scavengers, scurrying hurriedly through the shadows on their way to their friends' floor, and they crept right past Eve. Their friends are waiting and usher them into one of the cells, where they conspire. It's only been four days since they all signed their lives away to the Bloodharvest, but several of their original group have already been permanently killed by the hunters so they will have to act fast, before they dwindle further in numbers. They know that he always showers alone, because he has incriminating tattoos across his body that declare his loyalty to his warlord's gang, so once he is next seen slipping away to wash himself they will be able to strike without interruption. None of them expect to make it to the Enclaves and they are resigned to their upcoming deaths, but they will die with pride to the hunters' guns once they have taken their revenge on one of the many raiders who drove them to throw their lives away.

Their adorable little rendezvous is interrupted when they hear the sound of an approaching guard patrol. They tuck themselves into the dark corners of the cell and hide beneath the bed covers while the cells intended occupant sits visibly at the end of his bed, and the guards don't even look over at them. Eve loves it when the group of Scavenger's emerge from their hiding spots and declare to one another that they can safely carry on discussing their plans without being discovered, and she continues to peak around from her unnoticed hideaway in the corridor while they go over the smaller and less interesting logistical elements of their plan. She had already been curious, but she hadn't expected to find listening in to be quite so tantalising.

_Is their secret safe with you?_

She doesn't know the answer. The plan has been decided upon, and the two scavenger's she followed here take their leave, and she follows them back the floor that they reside on, skipping past her own cell block. Two boys, and one of them confesses his reservations. He's concerned that the violence will make them just as evil as the raiders. The other boy calls him a gutless piece of shit coward, and warns him that if they can go through with one murder, they will be capable of carrying out another if, for some reason, they decide they need to. Hearing this makes Eve feel giddy, she can't remember the last time she was ever this entertained, or excited about the future. When she falls asleep that night, she dreams that she is still stalking the shadows of the Complex.

It only takes two days of waiting. She has been keeping a very close on the Scavengers travelling between Complex cell blocks, between the cells and the showers. She encounters her aunt and brother during this time, as she is patrolling from one floor to another and watching for the telltale signs of imminent violence. It's her aunt who scolds her, and warns her that she's wasting her time and energy when she should be conserving it for the trials, and Eve doesn't say anything back - her brother scoffs at her silence. Eve leaves because she has far more important concerns than the opinions of these two even if, and she hates to think too deeply about it, she can't ignore how much nicer her family have been treating since they all entered the Bloodharvest together.

And she's glad to have left them behind, because she narrowly spots a pair of young boys joining with a group of other Scavengers as they all turn a corner, on route to the showers right now. She has to be cautious - she has not faced down the hunters in the Deathgarden and survived so that she can be murdered for witnessing a murder. Unfortunately, the architect who designed the showers had been strangely considerate of the existence of perverts amongst the prisoners here, which had never occurred to Eve as a problem until she realised it would be impossible for her to look through the entrance without being visible to anyone inside. There were no nearby corners to duck around, and no structures to hide behind. She for tried for a long while after she saw the group rush in to act, but couldn't hear anything from the closest safe spot that she could find. It was tempting, to step forward and have just a small peak, but the minor gratification wasn't worth the risk of getting caught.

Instead, she simply left the area and hung out on the steps between floors. Several people passed her by, all walking on their own paths, and one sat down beside her at the steps, and she was scared that her voyeurism had been discovered. This man introduced himself, and mentioned to her in a hushed tone that he happens to know someone, who knew someone, who might have a friend who could hook her up with some contraband, if she was curious. She declined, and he asked her why the hell else she was waiting around after curfew in this part of the Complex of all places. In response she laughed, telling him that she will decline but that she will remember him, in case an acquaintance of her cousin's friend's In-laws want to obtain something. This amuses and appeases him and he stands with a shrug, telling her he'll be on his way but to be careful and stay safe; she's newer than him and still has no idea what kinds of vile people lurk in these corridors after curfew, when all the good little Scavs are asleep. She told him not worry and its as she does this that a couple of Scavengers, still fresh from the showers, hurry up the stairs and past her. She can't contain her smile when, now alone, she gleefully descends the steps and bounds through the shower entrance. 

She doesn't understand why she needs to do this - only that she needs to, and that she wants to. And sure enough, she enters the showers sees the sight waiting for her. The shower lets out a pathetic trickle onto the naked man's body and it runs in rivulets down his chest, a hollow gurgle coming from the drain, and the water does nothing to wash away the blood staining the scene. He's laid out on his back and his arms and legs are twisted, each joint bent unnaturally and each limb targeted with blows until it broke, and his skin is a weeping, prickly mess of shattered bone splinters now exposed to the dewy open air. His abdomen is an opaque bruise of ruptured organs and pooled internal haemorrhaging and his lower jaw sits a meter away from the rest of him; it's the only intact part of his head. Everything above his shoulders is gone, with even the vertebrae of his neck ripped apart, and the gooey pile of mush and skull fragments is splattered across the shower tiles, and when Eve approaches she has to be mindful not to step in the footsteps that lead into the neighbouring stall which is still running. This crime was committed with passion, but the killers acted on unwavering and premeditated intentions. The warlord deputy's brain has been destroyed with thorough dedication, to guarantee absolute certainty in the permanence of his death.

She's transfixed how his blood still seeps out of him even after death, any residual life in his biology running down the Complex's shower drain. The blood on the walls is already cold, but his body still has warmth in it, which she feels as she dips her fingers into one of the misshapen gashes in his arms. More liquid oozes out at her touch, and she can taste the cloying, sanguine smell when she breathes in, and it startles her when she first retches, having not even noticed her own queasiness build. She fights to swallow her nausea before she's sick and pulls her hand away - she can't risk tampering with the crime scene, unless she wants to risk implicating herself in the inevitable investigation - and once her stomach settles she rubs the bloody, congealing goo between her fingers, feeling it go tacky and dry. She is fascinated, even though this is far from the first dead body she has seen, Eve having harvested the blood and NPI from hundreds by now during her trials, not to mention how often shes seen the creation of fresh new cadavers out of her incompetent teammates. But this time she can dawdle and probe this body as much as she wants, while she has no hunter to flee from. In this moment, she is in control.

_Can you feel it smeared on your hand, the power and guile than ran through his blood?_

_His life was taken from him, and now belongs to those willing to claim it._

_No more lies, no more falsehoods; for one brief moment he was honest, his true self brought out into the open by the terror of dying._

_No one else will never know this man as well as you do._

But that can't be true. Eve can readily think of several people who know this man better than she ever will, who got to witness the intimate moment of his mortal reckoning and not just the aftermath. Eve thinks thoughts that are not her own as she washes her hand in the still running shower stall, and then she leaves.

In the morning there is uproar and terror amongst the Scavengers. He was a popular man, kind and capable in the arena, and her father is distraught, having considered him a friend. Her mother grabs her when she tries to go to the cafeteria and takes her aside, to beg Eve to stop walking around the Complex all alone. The Bloodharvest is too dangerous for her to keep being so selfish, can't she think about anyone other than herself for once in her life? Eve pulls away and walks on by herself. The cafeteria is filled with two distinct types of Scavengers; those who shriek and gossip together in hysterical huddles, and those performing normalcy. And amongst that latter group, she can spot a specific table of Scavengers working very hard to maintain their facade of indifference. She gets her serving of food printed onto her tray and walks over, and asks if its okay if she takes a seat with them. She's no fool, she can see that several of them aren't thrilled by the intrusion, but they aren't willing to risk looking paranoid and so they reluctantly consent to her presence, and she takes a seat at the edge of the table. They resume their small talk amongst themselves while she eats, interrupted only occasionally whenever one of them addresses her, to prove just how comfortable and untroubled they are by a stranger's presence, the morning after they murdered someone. At one point one of the boys at the table stands up, to give another boy a hug amidst jokey protests. His boots catch her eye because they are impressively shiny and clean, decorated with shiny spikes and steel toe-caps. They will never know that she knows, and Eve smiles to herself.

Eve used to think that she wanted to avoid other people, but it is in this moment she realises that wasn't correct. She evades other people and does not let them approach her, but she is comfortable with getting to know other people. In fact, Eve starts to think she might love getting to know other people _so very close, and one day we will know people far better than anyone else ever will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DEER LIKE MEAT! YES THEY DO! DEER ARE CARNIVORES, YES THEY ARE!
> 
> i am Massively unhappy with how i wrote the stalker in my first fic ever and i mean MASSIVELY UNHAPPY but im also too lazy to go edit or rewrite, so instead I attempted writing another thing, exploring some lil theories headcanons and ideas i have as an over-imaginative P4 lore-slut
> 
> Miss eve barnes The Stalker ma'am i love you and also my heart is young and strong and i have a respectable resting heart rate of 84 bpm please respond


	2. Cannibalism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmhmyes hello this is ur chapterly reminder to check the cw tags okay thank you have a nice day <3

She remembers the first time took a life.

It was almost two years after the Enclaves were established. While the cities quickly devoured themselves themselves, every person scavenging for every little advantage they could stockpile until there was nothing but stripped out husks that became the ruins, her family had turned their eyes towards nature. For centuries humanity had survived by living off of the land, organically farming their food in the eras before food-grade 3D printing could even be imagined, and her family saw the opportunity to preserve themselves and regain stability and security by relearning this practice. They had acted fast, extended family congregating together and pooling all of their resources together, working to secure an unclaimed plot of land while other people aimless ran around, alone and without support. They had been on the outside of the ruins and therefore were the poor and undeserving of the world, but compared to the rest of the freshly destitute they had massive reserves of NPI at their disposal, which they would now invest into long-term security and food supplies, which they would eventually be able to trade with. They were poor by the standards of the Enclaves, but they were rich compared to the rest of the impoverished masses, and they would work hard to stay this way.

But this simple plan had left many facts of life unaccounted for, until it was too late to change course. As they would come to find out, the meagre plot of land was a poor-quality for farming. They tried many different edible plants, whatever seeds or sprouts they could obtain, but even those plants that would grow would result in a low yield. Unaccustomed to farm life, or any kind of manual labour, most of the family struggled to keep up with demands which crushed their fantasies of pastoral leisure, and injuries were common during the first year. While they were indeed rich in NPI, they had been wrong in assuming they would be the only group smart enough to come together with a communal purpose, and most of these other resourceful groups became bandits, or fell under the command of the warlords who were establishing their reach across the ruins, and who decided that they deserved regular "payments" for their "protection" that the family saw no choice but to pay. Yet one source of tension that none of them had accounted for was the internal conflict, as after living comfortable lives in a post-scarcity society many of them struggled to cope with the sudden loss of personal space and their dependency upon each other. Faceless uncles, nameless aunts and forgotten cousins all concentrated into one location, along with her own immediate family of mother, father and brother. Tolerating one another with a pleasant over holidays, planned visits and special events had been one matter, but it was another situation entirely to endure permanent close contact under the coercion of starvation.

The last problem was the one that Eve was already accustomed to from before the Enclaves - she had already been aware that she was a freeloading cog in the family hierarchy, as her brother wasn't shy to remind her. He's the younger one, only just entering his twenties, and he's the one who has the privileges that come from having responsibilities. She only has chores, and expectations she never meets, no matter how low her parents drop the bar. She remembers when they did have hopes for her, dreaming of her future accomplishments on her behalf, until no one could pretend anymore. No one had even acted surprised by the third time she flunked further education, and she resigned to her own incompetence. She hated it, and she hated herself for being so weak and pathetic. She thinks often of the one time she had confessed her desire to participate in the Gauntlet herself, before it had become the Bloodharvest, and become a Runner like her mother had. Any hope of receiving support was dashed instantly, and it stung when her younger brother laughed in her face, to say nothing of her father's condescension, or her mother's dismissal of the idea of her even succeeding at the application process. 

Going for long, winding walks in the woods soothes her. She can't ever escape restless ringing inside of her head, not completely, but knowing that she is alone makes it easier to ignore her unease. On the day that she she took her first life she had stolen her fathers gun, and left before dawn. Until that month, her father he hadn't owned any ammunition for it, and only time he had touched the gun was to mount it over the fireplace as an ornamental family heirloom, until the fear of bandits drove him to purchase his first pack of bullets. Eve steals those as well. It's an ancient hunting rifle, she would guess easily a century old, and in this moment Eve has a purpose.

She's sick of their scorn, so she's going to prove she isn't useless.

She'd seen it, by the lake. It was a several hour journey to make, walking alongside the river for a long stretch until it veers away after which she wanders onward through the trees, and Eve rarely walked the full distance before starting the hike back to the farm, but it was a beautiful patch of nature, where the green earth gave way to the cold, mossy pool of water encircled by trees and dense, dark undergrowth. There was nothing of material value here for anyone to scavenge, no edible berry bushes, no recyclable constructs from the war, only dirt, leaves, rocks and still water. Eve loved this, because being useless had resulted in this place an undisturbed safe haven. She had been alone in appreciating this, until she saw a reminder that it was only useless by human standards - a deer had settled by the lake. Eve had been shocked, and dared not to approach it the first time she saw it. She spent a long while simply observing it that first day, waiting for it to leave, except it didn't move on. After edging closer, Eve found out why it was so lazy, as it looked up sharply at the sound of her steps and scrambled onto two injured legs, hobbling away with fearful effort. One leg was broken in at least two separate places, and the deer was still in Eve's sight when it came to a stop further up the lake and sunk back down into the undergrowth. She decided to leave it alone, since she had heard that deer travelled in large herds, and she didn't want to provoke the others into attacking her, wherever they were lurking.

But when she returned the next day, she found the deer still there, and still with no sign of any of it's companions. What had only been a weekly excursion at most became her daily routine, Eve trekking through the woods no matter the weather for hours, spending the middle hours of her day by the lake, by the deer, and then the hours it took to walk all the way back to her family. Her mother had berated her as soon as she arrived back at the farm after one of these long walks, accusing her of being a drain on the farm and not understanding the severity of their plight, which amused Eve since her mother didn't trust her enough to let her help with the farm work either, so it didn't matter how she wasted her time. Except, as Eve realised, it wasn't a waste at all, because it was an opportunity. After a couple of days Eve realised that this deer was either abandoned by its herd or was the sole survivor of its herd, because it was completely alone, and she had grown increasingly bold, creeping slightly closer with each visit. The deer never failed to bolt, fear was wired into its instincts, but she was succeeding in getting closer each time before it fled the pathetic distance it could manage. Whether it was her own stealth skills increasing or a rising tolerance to her presence Eve didn't tell, but it made no difference either way, because the end result was the same. She had thought that the deer had also suffered a head injury, but she couldn't see the stumps where the remains of its broken horns should have been, the head simply covered in unscarred brown fur. She knew that deer were supposed to have horns, she'd seen the pictures from before the war. The legs had been injured, but maybe this it was also born defective.

Eve feels a sinking pit in her stomach throughout the walk to back to the farm that evening, and decides it is hunger that she feels. When she arrives at the farmhouse she eats her portion of cold soup still sitting on the dinner table, a watery mix of food-grade NPI and some disappointing weed of a vegetable, but it doesn't sate her. Her brother is sat opposite her at the table, fussing over some papers and one of several digital tablets, and he talks at her when she sits and eats. How he will try to pay off the local bandits on their next visit is apparently now Eve's business, and this time he might go through with selling them the last of the surviving livestock on the farm, to preserve their NPI stock. He starts to snap louder when she hasn't responded by the time she stands up to dump her empty soup bowl in the kitchen sink and go to her bedroom. He doesn't try to understand her, no one ever has, so she won't try to be understood any longer. She's thankful that she doesn't run into her mother this evening, and her father is the most tolerable and as usual holds his tongue when she passes him by outside their bedrooms, meeting silence with silence. She has a mirror tapped to the back of her bedroom door, one of few possessions she has been able to keep, and she can't bring herself to stare into is as she lays in bed, turning away so she doesn't have to see herself. She thinks about the deer instead. Somehow it is still alive by the lake, but its legs have not been quick to heal. It's only a matter of time until a predator finds this feeble prey animal, and it will stand no chance of escaping. And it's now that Eve realises that a potential predator already has found it...

The wind is harsh and the sky is overcast on the day she makes the fateful journey to the lake, now armed. She'd hoped for a quieter, softer morning once the sun rose, but she won't turn away now. She's going to prove her worth. Her family are wasting their time and their ever dwindling resources playing pretend on their shitty little farm, as if investing even more time will make up for all the time they've already wasted lying to themselves, but they will be grateful to her when she returns with fresh meat for them to feast on. She'll laugh at her mother, and agree that it was so stupid of her to want to be a runner, when she should have dreamed of being the hunter all along! But, of course, she can't say that anymore, not now that the Gauntlet's hunters have become the Bloodharvest's hunters, who are the tyrants who guard their Enclaves from the rest of the world. But merely dreaming of retorting back to her mother in such a way causes Eve to grin until her face hurts. This thought and similar ones entertain her the whole walk by the river and through the forest, until she arrives at the lake. 

It's a fight to breath in against the wind rushing past her, almost painful against her ears, and the deer looks weak and pitiful in this restless weather, but still it rests at its favourite spot by the water's edge, as if it is waiting for her by the rustling vegetation. Eve can't hear her own movement as she drops down low and shuffles closer, but the deer doesn't appear to either. She stalks closer, each inch slow and cautious, until she can see the texture of its fur, and the splotchy maroon swelling on its broken limbs. It can't run for its life, even if it knew it had to. She had chambered the gun during the walk, and her preparation pays off as she brings the gun up. Eve looks down the sights of the rifle, adjusting her grip until it feels natural, and she feels a tremor as she places her finger on the trigger, watching the deer as she feels herself on the precipice of something terrible, and powerful, and all-consuming inside of her. She's going to bring death to life, and only she knows this.

She squeezes the trigger.

The sound deafens her, the gunshot splitting apart the air like thunder. The shock of the impact drops the deer from its precarious footing and it flails in the greenery and launches back onto its feeble hooves in a desperate burst of energy, sprinting several feet before crashing back to the ground, and this time it remains there. Her hands throb with pain, and she feels like the bones in her wrists have been jarred against each other from the kickback of the gun. She stands up and looks at where the deer is, no need to hide anymore as she walks forward, but she still feels trepidation at being so visible. Or is it excitement? She's consumed by a morbid and horrible curiosity that has usurped the dread she knows she's meant to feel.

She had aimed for the head, having assumed that a shot through the brain would be instant death, but she had missed, and instead the deer wore a badge of crimson on its chest, which grew larger with each passing moment. It shakes as she approaches and one good leg kicks at the air but this pitiful resistance tapers off quickly. She's struck the killing blow today, but death was inevitable from the moment it was first wounded, before it ever entered her small forest haven. But still, she is cautious as she steps closer, because she doesn't know how strongly it will try and fight back, even as it becomes clear that it's already finished it's death throes. Eve can't tell if it is still alive, and stares down at it's face for a long while, trying to read into the shiny black orb that is its eye, but all she can see is the dark shadow that is her own silhouette looming over her prey. As stillness sets deeper in Eve kneels down by the deer's head, still keeping her grip on the gun. She listens closely for a sign, even if she doesn't know what she is searching for, but the wind howls loud over her own breathing, yet alone any shallow whisper still left in the deer's lungs. 

She should shoot it again. Eve knows that would be the smartest thing to do, to guarantee its pain has ended, but she can't bring herself to follow through, and not because she feels guilty or sickened. She keeps one hand on the gun, but with her other she reaches out, recoiling with a jolt when she feels a twitch of heat in the deer's fur, before reaching out again, this time with certainty, her fingers sinking through the bristling softness. There's a distant tremor she can feel through the skin and muscle, the fluttery palpitations of its heart still clinging to life. Or maybe it's her own pulse she can feel in her fingertips; she can't tell where the deer's dying warmth starts and her's ends. The deer stares up at her with a wet and empty eye, deep and as dark like the night sky in this dismal weather, and framed by beautiful eyelashes. The wind grows calmer and quieter, by the time Eve concludes that the deer must be dead now, and yet it feels so warm still. It doesn't resist, it can't anymore, as she scoots closer and sits down beside it, placing the gun on the mossy ground and taking hold of the deer's head up with both hands, lifting it up from the ground and turning it so she can marvel at it's other eye, which looks through her own gaze with vacant incomprehension. She shifts her legs, and lets the head rest in her lap, ignoring the blood that leaks out the chest cavity and over her clothes. She confused by her own whims, unsure what she hopes to feel by cradling it like she does, but she also laughs, because it doesn't matter why she does anything, since her deer doesn't have the power to refuse her. She has taken its life, and now it's hers.

Eve doesn't know how long she spends there, absorbed in her contentment, but the clouds in the sky start to clear, and she can see that it is long past midday. Her family will have noticed her absence by now, and she can't guess whether or not they will care, but she is unsure if they will notice that the gun is also missing. She has nothing to fear, however she grows concerned when she finally forces herself to stand, and looks down at both the deer and the gun. Her father may have bought bullets for the gun but he didn't buy a holster, which hadn't occurred to Eve as a problem when it was the only thing she needed to carry by hand, but now she has to make the long return journey to the farmstead with her prize - and her deer is not a small prize. She tries anyway, and scarcely manages to leave the clearing around the lake and enter the forest while holding onto the gun and pulling her deer along before giving up. She's proven to herself that she's more powerful than she ever gave herself credit for however, and decides that if she can't get by on brute strength she'll simply take a more tactical approach to this problem, and leaves the carcass to walk ahead with the gun. After going a fair distance Eve's places the gun down and returns to her deer, getting bloody splatter over herself as she hauls it along, taking care of one thing at a time. She does this several times, and she is journeying alongside the river by the time her arms and back burn too much and she has to stop partway through carrying the deer. At first she stands there and waits for her aches to ease and her strength to return, but the sky is starting to dim, and she would still have a couple of hours to walk even without the constant doubling back for her heavy trophy.

It frustrates her, and she's hesitant to do it, but her best option is to leave her deer and simply return to the farm with the gun. She can put the gun back where it belongs, reveal her ingenuity and capability to her family, and enlist someone to help her carry her deer the remainder of the journey. She hasn't even acted on this idea and she already misses the feeling of power and independence, but now that she's put the plan into coherent thoughts she can't deny that it is her best option. Before Eve leaves she kneels down again next to her deer and runs her hands along the curve of it's neck, across the silky fur on its shoulders, and even skims over its chest, where the fatal blossom of crimson sits, and it still manages to seep a little at the touch, even with all of the ruddy stains already on her. Just how much blood is there in a body? She traces circles around the bullet wound with fascination, before once again taking hold of the head. The warmth has long dissipated by now, but Eve can feel the memory of it as she pets the cold corpse one last time - this may be her final chance to touch the fur, but she looks forward to seeing it butchered and getting to feel the tender meat beneath. Once she is done stroking her deer she sets off, picking up the gun from its resting spot to make the remainder of the trek alone.

She can see typical activity on the farm, once it comes into sight, as her family wrap up their day's work. No one sees her at first, but she doesn't expect them to notice her as she walks out from the trees and climbs over the shoddy fencing with experienced ease, striding across the barren field. She hears small snippets of conversation, all of it unimportant drivel, as she strolls past clusters of idle and chatting relatives, and some of the small children run past her in their game of chase. After that someone yells loud near her, and they aren't addressing Eve. Unrest ripples through the farm as Eve looks around, more and more wild eyes turning to stare back at her as she walks to her family's farmhouse, where the gun belongs. A different distant relative starts to squawk and agitation bubbles around her, but she keeps her pace. They don't care about her, so she's resolved to not care about them. But then her brother bursts from the crowd and barks her name, and several people back away from the two of them. Now she stops walking, turning to look at him. Eve knows she should say something, and she wants to say something back to him, but her mind is blank and her tongue is in knots. She steps back and away from him, and most of the farm is circling around by now, many voices hissing urgently to each other in a dizzying buzz. Eve glares at her brother and growls at him to leave her alone, _now,_ and chaos breaks loose.

She's taller but he's stronger and he tackles her the ground, and she can hear a small girl scream, the younger children start shrieking. She tries to hit him with the gun, and it's too fast for her to see but she hears a blow crack against her face, and then crack again. It's a quick but ruthless ordeal as the gun is pulled from her grasp and she is grabbed by hands, twisted and pressed face down into the ground, no one knows what they are doing but panic is a fierce motivator. Her arms are pulled behind her, while someone's knee digs into her back and pins her down. She splutters in the mud and tastes blood, her nose is burning and broken and her lip is split. Her eyes water. She realises that it's not just her brother holding her down, but other family members are helping him. Someone fetches some rope from the barn, and once everyone can see she has been subdued order and rationality start to reemerge, and older family members congregate together to discuss their options. Her memories are faded, but even back then she remembers having no idea what the names of these cousins names were, who had been the ones to tie her hands behind her back with rough, slipshod knots and drag her into the barn, as if putting her out of sight and out of mind has ever fixed her before. She tries not to resist but that doesn't stop them from using force as they try and find something to tie her to, and then when they fail they instead just tie her up some more, binding her legs together and aimlessly running the extra length of rope around until they run out. An uncle, someones father, comes in and checks on what her cousins have done, and asks them to come out for the headcount. Why are they doing a headcount? Eve is left to lay among the empty grain sacks, alone.

Her unspoken question is answered almost an hour later, when her father visits her and demands to know what the FUCK she has been doing, and she tells him where the deer carcass is. He stands there and stares down at her in silence, and then leaves. Her nose has stopped bleeding, but her eyes keep watering. She is alone again. She realises that she's been covered in dried blood this whole time, from attempting to carry her deer through the forest and along the riverbank by herself. No wonder everyone reacted so badly to her, after someone as untrustworthy as her went missing with a gun and came back with bloodstains, and she starts to laugh. It was the blood that scared them. _You scare them._

It is late into the evening by the time she's untied and let out from the barn, and her father ushers her into the farmhouse before anyone can notice what he's done. He sits her down at the dinner table and joins her, without food. She can see the unwashed dishes piled in the sink. Her mouth still tastes like iron. He tells her that he understands it must have been confusing and difficult how everyone treated her when she came home, but it was also confusing and difficult for everyone else when she disappeared the way she did. He's put the gun away in his room, in a locked safe, and if for any reason anyone needs it they will have to inform him first. He tells her that it's for her own safety, and it isn't her fault that she struggles to understand this, or other simple things. But she isn't stupid. She can see that there's no locks on the kitchen drawers, where they keep the knives. The next day there are still bundles of knotted rope strewn about the barn, and the cabinets still display their full stock of cleaning products. Eve leaves at midday to go for a long, meandering walk by the river until the sky is pitch black, baiting out concern that doesn't comes looking for her. Her family aren't scared for her; they're scared _of_ her, and they're too weak to admit that they're scared.

_You scare them._

She was able to keep the skull. Her father and some of the other relatives left the next morning to retrieve the deer, whose guts had already been devoured and limbs chewed on by scavengers, the four-legged kind. They hauled back what remained anyway to butcher it, and ended up burying most of the hacked up mess afterwards. It had taken some conniving and pleading, some insistence that she wanted this first trophy as a reminder of that terrible thing she did, so that she would never be tempted to make the same stupid mistake again, until one of her older cousins relented. She sat with him while he boiled the skull and stripped the flesh away with a knife, undeterred by the revolting smell. It was a far less strenuous task than the farm jobs he would otherwise have to be doing, and he ignored her when she tried to talk to him, other than to call her an idiot for killing a female deer since they didn't grow the cool antlers, but for several hours he was her favourite person out of her entire family. She hides it a box underneath her bed, away from the prying, ungrateful hands of her family. She doesn't trust her parents or brother to let her keep it, and after every walk she dreads that she will come home to find it missing. Her doe sleeps safe in a cardboard casket, and Eve only takes her out in the dead of night. She loves the feel of the dried bone in her hands, running her bare fingers over the pale ridges and planes; she holds the doe up, face to face, so that she can gaze deep into those hollowed eye sockets. She murmurs soft nothings, the thoughts that her family won't hear. She understands her.

_Maybe they deserve to be scared._

The months tick by, and the temperature starts to drop again as their second winter approaches. Her father worries about the declining air quality, as unending plumes of smoke billow out from the cities. Her mother frets about the failing crops, their draining NPI reserves, the merciless local bandits, and looming, inevitable starvation. One evening, an aunt holds a talk with her father, and the gun is handed to her in a matter of minutes. She wants to lead a hunting party, after her son spotted a herd of deer roaming near the river, and her aunt is hailed as a hero when everyone eats their dinner with a side of venison that night. No one will acknowledge Eve. After a long stretch of poor weather, an old friend of her father finally visits the farm, while on a journey from one set of ruins to another. In exchange for hospitality and the requisite NPI, this friend will assist with printing out the necessary components for new masks for the whole family that will prioritise function and air filtration, unlike the fashionable ones made before the Enclaves. She takes the box down from her bedroom and rushes it to the guest room while her family prepare to eat, abandoning her own food to go cold, and an hour later she emerges with her special request fulfilled. Her mother yells in outrage when she sees Eve's new face, when she runs past the dinner table, but doesn't follow her up to her bedroom. It's too late, she knows her family can't afford to have a second mask printed for her. She throws the door shut so she can look into the cracked mirror still duct-tapped to the back of it. She feels a distant thought stir within her, not in words that she can hear but something beyond that; she feels the forests, and the death and life of her doe. She looks into the mirror, and meets her own eyes.

The air is clean and clear of smoke when Eve goes for her next walk in the woods, and she wears her mask. _You're going home._

When she arrives back at the farm, she finds out that her mother has been busy handing out digital tablets to everyone, and the children are all gone. She sees Eve and pushes the last tablet into her hands; there's a form displayed on it. Eve asks where the children are, and her mother tells her not to bother reading it and to sign it quick, because an Enclave aeroplane is waiting for them, to take them to the Complex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eve's scav mask was ABSOLUTELY also a deer skull just smaller than her hunter mask and with tiny or no antlers. i will not be accepting dissenting opinions on this, thank you for understanding that i am completely factually correct on every single thing i have said ever
> 
> i would die and also kill for a DG extended universe this world and all the worldbuilding and history is sO INTERESTING HOLY SHIT!!!!! game isn't even dead yet but i already miss all the potential stuff that we'll never even get to learn more about :(


End file.
